A Moment of Thought
by AGBALUX
Summary: In the dark, her light was easier to pinpoint. A fragment of the boy's thoughts. Takes place in BbS 0.2.


" Are you going to continue to hurt her?"

The issue was on the table, but he did not acknowledge it. It was easier to pretend that he had not been asked that. It was easier to pretend that he wasn't fucking everything up.

" It's like you _want_ her to suffer."

B ullshit. It was all the worst kind of lies. Of course, he wanted her to be happy. If he could just _do_ something, then he would. He would do anything to get her out of there. It was his fault she was there in the first place. She had saved him and he had trapped her in the Realm of Darkness, forever. The guilt was a sea and he was willing to drown in it. Drown and feel his lungs burst and finally, finally, pay for his mistakes.

E very time he thought of death, it always came to him in the form of an ocean. He would walk into the waves until they covered his head, and the noise would stop. It would stop, and he would laugh, allowing the water to enter his body and kill him. He deserved as much.

But the ocean would never kill him. He would keep breathing in water but it would not harm him. He would feel the warmth of the currents, enveloping him in a fleeting embrace—something so warm and so tender that his heart would wrench and scream until it let go—until they pushed him out of the water. And there, he would realize that, as if she had some control over the element, water would never truly harm him.

But he was the earth. He had drunk up all of her, and even when she was long gone, he remained. Even when tempestuous winds snapped at him and called to action, the earth would not crumble. Even if he was reckless, even if he was a _fool_ , he was strong. And that was all Xehanort needed.

Now the water had been dried up. And the winds had fallen into slumber.

He had never stopped seeing them. Every time his heart lost the fight—so many losses, so many times where had been subdued and coaxed into submission—he saw them in the flutter of his eyelashes. Her lovely, porcelain face that always held such a tender glance toward him; his smile and warm sunshine hair that could light up the darkest of nights.

He had failed them. He had failed them. He continued to fail them up to this point.

 _Submit, submit, submit_. The voices had been his only companion throughout his time in the Darkness. He wondered if they ever tired of his bursts of rage, of his fits, of the times that his heart had roared and pushed them back like a tremor. Surely, he was more trouble than he was worth.

But _he_ saw that his strength was his only redeeming quality, and it was all he needed. Not his heart, not his mind. Just the hollow shell of a strong, competent Keyblade wielder. His heart had been a slip-up: even now, it battled and refused to give up, even though it was clear that he would lose the fight eventually.

He has seen everything in flashes and glimmers, between Xehanort's heartbeats. He saw the light, but it was not long before it became swallowed by darkness. Again, again, and again, they waged war on each other. He does not know who is winning. He is too consumed and sedated to tell.

But then, he heard it. The soft hush of the ocean's waves.

At first, he believed it was a memory, of something from long ago. There was no water in the darkness, there was no life. There was only the impartial earth, and everything he had eaten up and destroyed.

He could still hear it. The ocean, calling out his name, as she were stuck in a wild reverie. The sea wanted to reach up and see the land, and acknowledge her presence, because maybe, the ocean needed the earth. Be it by choice or by the reason that they were created to coexist, with the winds always pulling them closer, even when they were meant to be apart, she was calling him. Maybe, just maybe.

And that was enough.

He ventured through the dark for what seemed like countless nights. But the ocean's heartbeat did not lull him. If anything, it made him stay wide awake. It made him want to see her personally. To see her shades of blue with his very own eyes, and in the only way he could, make her a part of his now-possessed heart.

Of course, the water and the wind would always be in his mind and heart. His mind, he felt, thought only of them, even as it moved through countless wastelands, separated from his heart and body. His mind was alone in a husk of metal, a whisper of humanity left inside a weapon. It had not forgotten; if anything, it was the living example of how the mind always trumps the body, and how the heart is a game that can never be truly won or lost.

If there was a will, there would be a way.

"Terra, Ven!"

He opened his eyes to see thorns and deep, thick poison skies. He did not understand. After so many flashes and bursts of incomprehensible images, he had found a constant setting. Where was he?

Her voice is still ringing in his ears, and the realness of it filled him with fresh air. It is not a memory, not his imagination. She was near, and her strong, brave soul was calling out for him, pulling at the strings of his weakened heart. In this land of shadow, her light could not be extinguished. She was too strong for that.

She had always been too strong. Stronger than him, stronger than Ventus. She was carved out of the most righteous filaments: out of stars and diamonds and platinum.

Even now, as he saw her, a mere few feet away, he took her in. Had she not changed? Had that face not gained a single wrinkle or crease in the time that had passed? Had her bones not grown tired in the years that had been wearing her down? Had her calloused hands not grown heavy from holding the world up, even as it slipped through her fingertips?

The ocean does not change. It is as beautiful and infinite as it is the first time he had seen it, even when it was nothing but a small sea. Now, with those endless eyes that had hidden many sorrows, she is more regal than she ever was. She is too graceful for time, but pain is not a stranger to her life.

He recalled it being his fault.

But, he indulged in the little happiness he would have in uttering her name, even as the worry of her circumstance threatened to eat him alive.

If the darkness was too strong, nobody would be able to appreciate the ocean, glimmering under the moonlight. But the earth, always beneath her, would be there, even if she forgot. The earth never truly crumbles, the wind never truly dies.

"Aqua, you're—!"


End file.
